Wiped? Like with a cloth?
If I was going into the priesthood as a young man, I’d carry a gun.
They will. Never get on “top” of it because they refuse to admit allowing openly homosexual men into the priesthood in the 60s is THE biggest cause of all this! Did abuse happen before the 70s and 80s of course it did, but the insane uptick that started in the 70s and 80s is because they allowed the homosexual kabal in. It takes 8 years from joining semensry to being ordained a priest. So when you start letting them in after Vatican II in 1962, they start to get into parishes and having access to kids starting in the 70s...
Then those in start to spread the word to other who then join, and by the 80s you have a full on epidemic.
Until the church is willing to admit that they have a sodomite problem all the other sexual issues will never go away. Because to expose even the worst of them, threatens all of them, so the incentive is to cover it up. Not simply to “protect” the church, but to protect themselves.
If priest a has been ebgaging in sexual relations with various other members of the church and then is discovered to be preying on children as well, everyone he was ever active with has incentive to keep it quiet because if he talks they are under threat as well, not esoteric threat of the greater church but personal threat.
Until the church admits this fundamental mistake and problem, it will NEVER be able to remotely have a shot at ending this. Like the drug addict who tells thnselves they can quit anytime they want to.